Dark Mark
by Emmeebee
Summary: Furious at Jake and heartbroken from the day's events, Tobias flies. Set after 'the event' in The Beginning so, ah, warning for heavy stuff.


The wind pelted his face with air and the occasional piece of leaf or stick as he flew through it like a race car driver on the final stretch. He had grown accustomed to ignoring such minor irritations over the years, but this time he welcomed it. Physical pain was infinitely better to the emotional pain that was always close to the surface, threatening to overcome him and pull him into its dark depths like a bog should he just step into its clutches. He just wished that the little physical hurts could pile up and, once their tower grew tall and unstable enough, topple over to permanently fill up the swamp.

A challenging caw cut through the air; whoever it belonged to didn't want him there. Usually, he would have paid more attention to the threat, both out of self-preservation and to afford the creature the respect he felt it deserved; now, however, his focus was merely on the rush of flying. Part of him found the idea of fighting repugnant after the day's macabre events, but the other part toyed with the idea of inflaming the other bird and then just not defending himself as it tore him to bits. He would rather his remains lie with Rachel's scattered ashes, but supposed that it would be too difficult to orchestrate now; for that to happen, he would need to show one of the others where he'd scattered them while ruminating about the benefits of cremation, and then ensure that the other Animorphs knew exactly where his body lay; for that to happen, he would have to include them in his plans.

No; if he did it, he'd have to accept that he couldn't control where his remains would end up.

Say he were to aggravate the unknown creature… Would it be easy to just let go? Would he be able to hold himself immobile as talons ripped into him and a seasoned beak gnawed at his flesh? The remaining Animorphs would never know what had become of him; they would just assume that he had flown away to live out the rest of his days in reclusion. It wouldn't hurt them, and it would relieve him of the constant, debilitating ache. It wasn't even as if anybody needed him anymore now that the war was over and his naïvely-accepted duty complete.

Yet he didn't think he could do it. Instincts would rebel against him at the end, and there was a chance that he would win the ensuing struggle, and then he would just be worse off because there'd be blood on his hands, then, too. Enough blood, _too much_ blood, had already been spilled that day. Besides, he knew that Rachel would have despised the very idea of just idly giving in to it. She might have calmly accepted death as if it were merely an inconsequential side effect she'd known about in advance, and she would have understood his need to just escape it all, but she still would have thought it to be the cowardly actions of a quitter and railed against it. He didn't want his last moments to be doing something to completely antithetical to both of them, especially if he were doing it in the name of her memory.

Jake had tried to contact him, first by sending Marco after him and then by coming himself, but, even when they had found him, he had steadfastly ignored the both of them. The only sign of acknowledge he had given was, in Jake's case, speeding up until their erstwhile leader had been left far behind him. Forgiving had always come easily to Tobias, even when forgetting hadn't, but he knew this was one time when neither would ever truly happen. He understood Jake's reasons; if Rachel had been held hostage like that, he'd have done almost anything to release her from it, as she would have done for him. The price this time, however, had simply been too high. Jake should have known that; Jake had to have known that. In Tobias' mind, it was utterly disgusting either way; either the other boy, their reluctant leader turned ruthless manipulator, hadn't had the perspective to see that sending his cousin on a suicide mission was wrong, or he had been willing to do the wrong thing for his own personal gain. In either case, the most reconciliation Tobias could see himself ever even contemplating agreeing to was temporarily ignoring the issue in the interests of a short-term truce, and even then he couldn't imagine anything that would prompt him to agree to that arrangement. Another outbreak of war was the only thing that came to mind, and, even then, he could see himself just sitting it out. That had, after all, been what Rachel had wanted for him all along.

She had truly been the best of them. However bloodthirsty they might have perceived her to be, she had been the only one to really accept the gritty reality of war and what it called her to do. The others had brushed the dirty work over to her so that they could maintain their perfect little illusion that their hands were clean, whereas she had seen it for what it was and forced herself to reckon with that. Her eyes were wide open, and yet she fought anyway. He had seen the way the responsibility had messed her up, had made her terrified about what she might become, had seen her grappling with those fears even as she prepared for another mission. Cassie, Marco and Ax would mourn her, and they would blame Jake, but none of them would really see the true picture; they would blame Jake for encouraging her, for directing his weapon to where he needed her to be, but none of them would ever understand that it was he, and they, who had fashioned her into that weapon in the first place, who had slowly but surely pushed her towards her inevitable self-destruction. Even if Jake had not ordered her to go after Tom, they would have sent her to her death eventually, whether it was fighting at their request or fighting so they never had to make the request.

Nevertheless, theirs had been the crime of ignorance, however wilful and self-serving; Jake's had been that coupled with the crime of negligent disregard. There was no doubt in his mind as to which was worse.

As he soared through the treetops, playing a game that was equal parts acrobatics and chicken, he thought back to that moment. He had known what was going to happen the instant he saw her there, had merely been counting the minutes until the inescapable conclusion. When she morphed back to human, he did too; hawks didn't cry, and, in that moment, he'd known that the only thing worse than watching her die would be to do so with the dry, calculating eyes of the aerial predator. The memory haunted him like a dark mark on his mind, a nightmare that would always replay whenever he gave it any sort of hold in which to sink it ethereal claws.

His only hope, bitter and vindictive as it was, was that Jake would feel it too, would experience the constant reminder of what he had so carelessly done. Sins might be forgiven and forgotten, but their effects on the world linger on. A bully might repent and change, but the victim will feel the effects of his words and fists forever. An adulterer might commit anew and be forgiven, but the trust between partners will never feel quite the same again. A teenage boy may regret sending his cousin to die, but nothing in his power will ever be able to rewrite his decision and bring her back. Maybe misery really does love company, or maybe it was his hawk nature. Regardless, he wanted Jake to realise the enormity and finality of what he had done. Nothing can be completely unwritten; nothing can completely disappear.

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A/N: Thanks again to my lovely brother for betaing this. It's a response to another prompt; this time, it was based off the first song to come up after setting my music to shuffle. The song in question was _Dark Marks Don't Disappear _by RiddleTM, which proved to me that, yes, it is in fact possible for something to be _too _closely related to canon. As always, if you choose to write something in response to the prompt, let me know!


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